Brown University removed a news story on a study conducted by one of their own researchers, a study on the rise in transgenders, particularly the phenomenon called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria”: gender dysphoria that was not present in early youth, but that manifested within days or weeks in teens and young adults.

photo courtesy of LC.org

Lisa Littman, an assistant professor of the practice of behavioral and social sciences at Brown’s School of Public Health, stated, “This kind of descriptive study is important because it defines a group and raises questions for more research. One of the main conclusions is that more research needs to be done. Descriptive studies aren’t randomized controlled trials – you can’t tell cause and effect, and you can’t tell prevalence. It’s going to take more studies to bring in more information, but this is a start.”

Science Daily published on the findings, summarizing that “…It was unusual for a teen to report initial feelings of gender dysphoria during or after puberty without childhood symptoms. Clinicians have reported that this kind of gender dysphoria is on the rise, particularly for patients whose sex was observed to be female at birth. Additionally, the numbers of adolescents seeking care for gender dysphoria has increased dramatically. It is unknown why these changes are occurring.”

This rise correlates with the “fad” of claiming one is a transgender and seeking support as a victim of the evil patriarchal, cisgender society. This prompted Littman’s study of 250 parents of kids who “suddenly developed gender dysphoria symptoms during or after puberty.”

Some facts:

the children of the parents surveyed were more than 80 percent female at birth and ranged between 11 and 27 years old at the time of survey, with an average age of 16.

21 percent of parents reported their child had one or more friends become transgender-identified at around the same time

20 percent reported an increase in their child’s social media use around the same time as experiencing gender dysphoria symptoms

45 percent reported both of these last two: friends and social media use

62 percent of parents reported their teen or young adult had one or more diagnoses of a psychiatric disorder or neurodevelopmental disability before the onset of gender dysphoria

Forty-eight percent reported that their child had experienced a traumatic or stressful event prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria, including being bullied, sexually assaulted or having their parents get divorced.

“Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” Littman said. “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.”

From 2014 to 2015 alone, referrals to Britain’s gender identity service for children doubled. The numbers have also spiked in Australia and the United States, among others.

So, any effort to actually research the environmental component of transgenderism was met with raucous calls for censorship and the Ivy League school complied.

“There’s a lot that we don’t know about gender dysphoria,” Littman said. “The cultural landscape has changed very dramatically, so it’s not unexpected to see new types of presentations. It’s important to determine which patients would benefit from medical and surgical transition and which patients would not benefit and might be harmed.”

“[T]he School… has heard from Brown community members expressing concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.”

2/ The honesty here is noteworthy. Researchers can publish findings that support the “born this way” storyline (which plenty of trans people themselves disagree with) all day long with no problems. Anything else will be careful picked apart for signs of “harmfulness.”

3/ “[T]he School… has heard from community members expressing concerns that the conclusions could be used to discredit efforts to support Y and invalidate the perspectives of Z” could be used as justification to discredit just about any interesting social science study

Part of the point of the volume of the uproar here is to signal that anyone else curious about this (potential) phenomenon had better not try to study it

Public domain image/Piotr VaGla Waglowski, http://www.vagla.pl

About the Author

Brandon Jones - Writer and Co-Founder of The Global Dispatch, Brandon has been covering news, offering commentary for years, beginning professional in 2008 on sites like Examiner and blogs: Desk of Brian, Crazed Fanboy.
Appearing on several radio shows, Brandon has hosted Dispatch Radio, written his first novel (The Rise of the Templar) will be a licensed Assembly of God Pastor by the Spring of 2017.
"Why do we do this?" I was asked and the answer is simple. "I just want the truth. I want a source of information that tells me what's going and clearly attempts to separate opinion from fact. Set aside left and right, old and young, just point to the world and say, 'Look!'"
To Contact Brandon email [email protected] ATTN: BRANDON

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